The first football game of the year. Even with all our prep work I think it's safe to say we were overwhelmed. Working both the fry station and the hotbox could get crazy. It's not that the hotbox was that hard. When I had four orders for french fries stack up and then I get asked for three cheeseburgers and a hot dog was when it got tricky. Sometimes I couldn't pay attention to what was running low on the hotbox because of all those fry orders. Separating paper boats from one another is a lot harder than it looks! It's a good thing giving what's asked is so simple a job, even when orders would sometimes overlap and I'd hand out more than was asked. The operation beyond that from my limited viewpoint seemed pretty flawless. As hectic as it got the system itself was sound. It was the pure unexpected numbers of people asking for what we were making after we told them no, we are out of Pepsi, and no, checking again will not help, that got to us. I personally burned through three pairs of plastic gloves grabbing the fries that were dumped into the hotel pans right out of the fryer, and I got off easy. I thought the evening, barring a few popped nerves, was a great success.
-Drew

On Thursday I worked the Snack Shack for the boys soccer game. I worked 2 games before this one but this was personally my favorite one so far. My job was to make fat sandwiches and to get the chicken fingers, mozzarella sticks and onion rings out of the hot box. I made about 30 fat sandwiches on Thursday and it was a great experience for me. At the beginning I was a little slow because I've never done it before but as the night went out, I got a lot better. On Thursday the game was kind of crowded but obviously nothing like a football game. At halftime it was very crowded though. We were running out of some food like fries and it was pretty crazy. We also made hot chocolate and only like 5 people ordered it. Overall it was another really fun night in the snack shack and I can't wait for my next game to work. Michael P.

This Friday was the first snack shack for football. It was very hectic. No one could hear any one, so different people would yell the same order. This caused multiple of the same order to be made, which wasted time when we could be making other orders. Also, once an order was made and we had to give it to the cashier when you went to give it to them no one knew whom it went to, so we had to stand there and yell to the crowd whose order it was. Sometimes when no one would answer we would think that it was an extra and put it away, then the cashier would be waiting for it to come and it wouldn’t.

Jillian

After working in the snack shack for the first football game I feel there are definitely aspects in which we could improve. The communication in the snack shack did not go as well as in previous events/years. People were yelling out of pure excitement of being in the snack shack which made communication of orders difficult. At times it was even difficult to communicate with the person standing next to me. One of the aspects that we did well though was being prepared with the utensils that we needed. Unlike last year when we were constantly running back to the culinary department to get materials this year we had everything that we needed. The only supplies we ran out of was food. Which is never a complaint when you sell everything you have. I think that we were definitely caught off guard with the amount of people that showed up. I was definitely hard for us to communicate with each other inside the snack shack. There were times when people were ordering hot dogs and i had to grill them from start because I didn’t know that there were none in the hot box. Bryce was standing right next to me and I could barely hear him let alone the orders that I needed to hear from the front on the house. The falafels were annoying to fry because we rarely got an order for them and when we did we already had stuff in the fryer which made it difficult. In addition we had an order get sent back because the chicken was not warm, in the future we should probably grill it and keep some in the hot box. Also we got an order of chicken tenders back. We needed to remember FIFO, first in first out. We were putting new chicken tenders on top of the old so when we got to the bottom they were cold. One lesson that it learned from the experience was that we can never fry off to many fries before the night begins.

-Matt B

On Thursday the 10^th I worked my first snack shack. It got crazy when everybody kept trying to jump in to the job that you were doing. The people on money weren’t shouting out the orders they would just say them when nobody can hear them on the back by the fryers or by the grill. The people on the hot box would tell us when we need food the minute we need it, they didn’t tell us when we were low on food.

 kyle wallin

Tate Schwab

            On Friday I worked the snack shack for football. I was a cashier. It sucked. I don’t want to do that job ever again. Doing the math in my head quickly was really difficult. One lady threw me a dirty look and was trying to give me crap for taking too long. She was annoying. I kept getting asked for French fries after we ran out. I feel like if someone is going to be the cashier they should be told a few days ahead of time and study the menu so that they already know everything when they get to the snack shack. Also, they should have calculators in the snack shack for bigger orders. The long orders confused the hell out of me. People should know what they want to order when they get there. Also, people shouldn’t crowd the ramp if they’re not ordering food. Patience is key in the snack shack. Especially when annoying ladies say their chicken tenders are cold. If people were just generally less annoying and more patient the snack shack would be perfect. 

            Okay, so, last Friday was my first time ever working the snack shack. If I were to sum it up, I’d say it was insane. I don’t think I ever actually heard a full sentence from Matt, but he was maybe 12 inches away. I have also developed a mild phobia of fried food, after being immersed in deep fryers for about 5 hours straight, and I think my skin absorbed a good 12 oz of the oil over the course of the night.

            Now, as I found out it was the busiest snack shack of all time, I feel a little better, I mean what better of a breaking-in game for my first time!! Sarcasm aside, in the moment it was very stressful, but also kinda fun, but still waaaayyy crazy. But yeah, as I became one with the deep frying station, I noticed a couple things. For starters, we should devise a better transfer system, having to cross over to the middle station with a searing hot fryer, or an insanely hot hotel pan, could be improved up, side mount attached perpendicular to fridge? Also, when we ran out of prepped fries, Luke and gang got rather impatient, (and LOUD) so if another game like that ever arises, a good 30 hotels of fries could have been prepped.

            Besides that, once we got into the swing of things, it turned to chaos, it was impossible to keep up with the size of the kitchen we have, and the amount of orders coming in. Luckily, this will probably be the busiest game I will ever work, and of course it figures it would be my first.

            I will definitely be interested to see what this Thursday brings, when the snack shack isn’t at about ten times its maximum capacity! Before I finish, I think that if possible we could devise the ventilation system to incorporate the fourth fryer, it would be a game changer. By having three dedicated to fries, and one for the occasional falafel, which screws everything up, or maybe some chicken tenders, it would be a lot easier, than having to juggle three fryers for about a million orders. What an expierince. I think it took me all weekend to get the smell of the food out of my pores.

-Bryce D

nothing is more daunting then looking into the fridge and seeing two waters left, no Pepsi, and no Gatorade. All we had left was Starbucks iced coffee, and that sure wasn't a hot item  (until that was the only option left). But of course, i kept getting asked for red Gatorade, and a mountain dew. I don't know hoe many times im said "we're out" but it was defiantly a record amount. And some people where really rude. For some reason i started taking orders while still getting drinks, and i was trying to get change for this little boy, but im not too good at math under pressure. The order was $2.50 and he gave me a $5 bill. Obviously i had to give him $2.50 back but i had no idea at the time, so around 2 minutes later all he says is  "Are you even in high school  Do you even know how to do math?" And at that point i was so over the snack shack. Im not into people being rude for me and im sure as hell not into doing math under pressure. So hopefully, i never have to work a snack shack as hectic as that. But to make it better just in case i do, we should place the menus in a better location so people don't waste time at the counter figuring out what they wanna do.Maybe we should have little notepads so when they're are long orders, and calculators because that a lot of math for 4 hot dogs, 4 mountain dew, 4 french fries, and two fat sandwiches  And please if your yelling t the drink person, say what you want to drink, stop throwing up some letters with your hands and just say it because the whole hand thing took em wayyy more time. and at the end of the night we should have a little break (5 minutes at most) just to get some fresh air because it was so hot and i just needed some fresh air.

- bailey s

This last Friday on 9/20/13, I experienced the snack shack for the first time. In this exposure, I was given the Fat Sandwiches station and had a blast in regards to that, other than that, things were hectic and literally like hell. I noticed that when an order was said 4-5 people would repeat that order, and in turn would end up causing several orders to be over made. Another thing that was an issue was the noise. The noise itself even if their were no customers could have made it an awful time. The last thing I noticed was an issue was that marinara sauce was wanted with almost every mozzarella stick order, but it was never packaged. I think if we pre-package marinara sauce and store it in the hotbox that would be a much better idea. The other issues can be solved if everyone limits the chatter and the noise. Overall, the snack shack experience was great training although it wasn't completely fun. -David B

Drew Szarka

Snack Shack Day 1: Intimidation. Mild as it was, I had no idea what the experience was going to be like. Would there be a ton of people for this soccer game? What job would I be given? As soon as we got there, I was allotted with a shrug the Fat Sandwich station, and given the task of getting out the sandwich stuff. I had no idea what this meant. Great, I thought, this was a sink or swim type deal. Fortunately enough Hayden stepped in and told me what was actually supposed to happen for a successful Fat Sandwich station. We went through station upkeep, organization, sandwich composition and keeping tabs on how much of everything I had left. After the confusion was over, it took some time to get comfortable with the orders coming in. There weren’t too many orders for Fat Sandwiches this game and I got the hang of it pretty quickly. I thought it was a blast. And given it was a first time for the majority of the people there I think it was pretty successful. I think it was really necessary for most of us to get in this trial run before things really start to get crazy during football season.  Rotating stations will be fun, but I’m sensing I’m going to have to hold myself back. I always want to jump in when I think I could do something better (a reason I don’t like group projects in school). Doing it right is doing it my way. I will abstain and stick to my station. That’s not to say I won’t lend a hand if I can; I’ll just do my best not to kick the person out of their own station. I’m sure they can handle Fat Sandwiches at their own pace.

  This should be a good year. 

I worked my first day in the snack shack on Tuesday and it was very fun. I didn’t think it was going to as fun as it was. Everyone worked together as a team and that was the key to success. Nobody was being selfish and that it the main reason we did a good job. At some points we had a few big crowds and I think we did a good job by getting them the food as quickly as possible. The things that we can improve on is the candy by separating the candy into 3 or 4 different baskets because we had one huge basket the other night and it was very hard to find some stuff. The other thing we could improve on is cleaning as we go even though it’s kind of hard to do that it would help us out a little bit. Another thing that we did well was cleaning up after we were done. It didn’t take that long because everyone helped out. Overall I think we did a very good job considering it was almost all of our first time working in the snack shack. The next time we work we will definitely be better because we will have experience.  Michael P.